


Turn Out The Lights

by thrillofyourcharms



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cutting, Episode: s01e08 Father's Day, Episode: s01e13 The Parting of the Ways, F/M, Happy Ending!!!!! hopeful ending?, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, i think, please (and i cannot stress this enough) do not read if you are triggered by self harm of any form, tw: self-harm, yes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 01:03:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18063599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thrillofyourcharms/pseuds/thrillofyourcharms
Summary: The blade rests in her palm, and Rose looks at it, unblinking. She knows she should throw it out, knows that she shouldn’t keep temptations hidden in her room, and knows she shouldn’t cut. She knows how much she’ll regret it, knows how addicting it becomes, knows she’ll hate the scars, knows she’ll feel ashamed. Sheknowsshe should throw it out.Yet she can’t.





	Turn Out The Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the Julien Baker song of the same name.
> 
> First Doctor Who fanfic I’ve ever written, so possibly (and probably) OOC. Sorry about that. I wrote this as a coping mechanism and a healthy alternative to self harm, so I wasn’t too concerned with grammar/spelling errors either. Sorry about that, too.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: This fic focuses largely on self harm. If you feel that this could be triggering to you, at all, please do not read it.

The TARDIS is quiet when they return to it, the Doctor piloting them away from 1987 and all the hell it brought with almost robotic movements. He’s relaxed, though, and they’ve both talked and they’ve both apologized and she cried and he’s not angry at her.

And while she isn’t angry at _him_ , she’s angry at herself. 

And this anger doesn’t feel like her usual, pissed off, ready-to-slap-someone anger. No, she _knows_ what this type of anger means, and she doesn’t know how to feel about it.

She’s stiff and slow in her trudge out of the console room, muttering something about going to bed to the Doctor, only half-caring if he hears her excuse. She can already tell that she’s going to make a bad choice tonight -she can feel it creeping upon her as she walks to her room- and the lump in her throat makes her decision set in stone.

She hasn’t done this in months, in _years_ maybe, but when she locks her door and her shoulders sink, it’s an achingly familiar atmosphere in her bedroom.

She hates it.

Her jacket is shrugged off, and as she’s changing into her pajamas she silently admits to herself that yes, her mind is made up and this is going to happen. There is no way that she can simply change her mind, or force herself to _just go to sleep right now please_. She’s going to do it, no matter how much a small part of her is screaming at her not to. The only thing she needs now, she muses, is a tool.

It’s not as though the TARDIS simply leaves spare razor blades lying around on the tabletops of companion’s rooms, however. But Rose didn’t always have razor blades on hand at the Powell Estates, and Rose knows what she can use instead. Resigned, she makes her way into the en suite and grabs an unused shaving razor. 

She’s done this before, and she knows how to quickly take apart the razor and get the individual blades out. She’s somewhat familiar with doing this.

She thinks about what an absolute idiot she was. She breaks a piece of plastic off of to be razor. She thinks about how she nearly killed everyone, killed the Doctor. And another piece of plastic. How utterly stupid she was. The blades are almost completely exposed. She didn’t know why the Doctor kept her along. He had just told Adam, before they left him.

_I only take the best. I’ve got Rose._

Oh, how wrong the Doctor must understand he had been to call her that, after today. It hurts her to think about how much she disappointed him, how much she failed him. 

No, she thinks with a flush of irritation, she is most certainly _not_ the best.

She breaks off the last few bits of plastic, and removes one of the blades. Her breathing unsteady, she sets down the razor on her vanity and focuses on the sharp object in her right hand.

She’s gripping the small blade between her forefinger and thumb, nearly pulling up her shirtsleeve when there’s knocking at her door and she jumps. The knocking is soft, but her room had been so silent previously that the noises startle her. Old fears kick in and she _cannot_ get caught with a blade in her hand. Taking a shaky breath, her trembling hands move quickly to pick up the broken bits of razor before throwing them in the bin. 

Before she can think twice about it, she places the razor blade in the back of the drawer of her nightstand.

She moves quickly to the door, and unlocks it, biting the inside of her lip and feeling slightly ashamed of what she was going to do just seconds before.

It’s the Doctor on the other side of the door, of course. Just seeing him makes a wave of guilt flush through her. He’s looking equally as vulnerable as her, having taken off his leather jacket. His expression is soft and for a moment she’s worried that maybe he somehow knew what she was about to do, but he doesn’t look worried, per say. Maybe apologetic. Nervous.

“I uh, I know you wanted to sleep but I figured, well, it’s been a rough day for both of us. And we’re nearly finished with A Tale of Two Cities, so I thought we could...”

She musters up a small smile on her face, trying to push her urges from her mind, and unconsciously tugs her sleeve down. 

“Yeah!” She tries to be enthusiastic, not wanting to raise suspicion, and maybe overdoes it a bit. “Let’s- let’s go.”

And they move to the library, and his voice is so gentle when he reads to her, and they’re so comfortable together, and suddenly everything is better and the blade is forgotten in her drawer.

For tonight, at least.

________________

She wakes up the next morning in her bed, despite having fallen asleep on the couch in the library. She lays in bed, recounting her near-actions of the night before. Before the Doctor knocked on the door. Just in time, she thinks, and can’t decide whether she is thankful for or upset about his accidentally-perfect timing.

She rolls over under her covers hesitantly, and slides her hand into the drawer of her nightstand, and frowns when she can’t find anything. The TARDIS, usually humming peacefully in the not-morning, has decided to remain eerily silent today. 

She sits up in bed. After feeling around a bit more and peering into the drawer -oh yes, there it is.

The blade rests in her palm, and Rose looks at it, unblinking. She knows she should throw it out, knows that she shouldn’t keep temptations hidden in her room, and knows she shouldn’t cut. She knows how much she’ll regret it, knows how addicting it becomes, knows she’ll hate the scars, knows she’ll feel ashamed. She knows she should throw it out.

Yet she can’t.

Sucking in an anxious breath, she sets the blade in the back of the drawer and promises herself to never use it.

_________________

“Aw, c’mon Rosie,” Jack reasons. “You’ll love Mångata III! I thought every girl would love a day of swimming in a tropical ocean paradise!” The girl in question shrugs before responding

“I do, Jack. It’s just- I told you, I’m just not in the mood to go somewhere hot today.” She sounds too depressed when she says that, she decides, and goes to make a joke. “Besides, you just want to see me in a bikini!”

She’s sitting on the jumpseat while her friend leans on a coral near her, raving about some tropical planet he visited while he was working for the Time Agency. It’s been weeks since 1987, and while Rose has kept her promise, it hasn’t stopped her from being hyperaware about her body. She remembers tracing the old, raised lines that run across her upper thigh, and understands that she absolutely cannot wear a bathing suit unless she wants the Doctor -or Jack- to see what she’s done to herself in the past.

Not wanting to think about how terrifying _that_ would be, she tunes back in, and just in time to hear Jack finishing up his ramblings. 

“...and sure, seeing you in a bikini would be the cherry on top. But you’ll get to see me shirtless, Rose, and that’s gotta count for something! I know it does,” he says with a wink, “after what the psychic paper said when you gave it back to me. I believe it was something along the lines of-”

“Tell you what, Jack,” the Doctor pipes up, walking into the console room, “I’ll drop you off on Mångata III and Rose and I will go someplace else. Pick you up at the end of the day.”

Jack grins wolfishly. “More fun for me. You folks are missing out. Mångatians are _gorgeous_.”

And so the Doctor pilots the TARDIS to Mångata III, rolling his eyes at the other man’s antics, and drops Jack off before setting in new coordinates.

“Where we goin’?” Rose shifts in her seat. This is the first time they’ve been alone -really, properly alone- since they picked up the captain, and she doesn’t know why but she feels nervous.

There’s a glint in the Doctor’s eye as he smiles and grins at her-nothing mischievous, she determines, just excited. “You’ll see,” he tells her. “You’ll want to go change, gonna be quite cold.”

Ten minutes and two layers of jeans later, the Doctor tells Rose to open the door, grinning in anticipation. She does, and she gasps.

__________

They stay on the planet -he doesn’t tell her the name- for an hour or so, and when Rose gets too cold the Doctor shrugs off his jacket and places it around her shoulders, ignoring her protests with a grin and a “‘M not cold. Got superior biology, me.” And when they’re done wandering the frozen waves, he guides her back to the TARDIS with an arm around her shoulder.

They’re nearly to the ship when he murmurs it to her. 

“Woman Wept.”

She lifts her head from where it was resting on his side, and looks at him.

“What’s it called that for?”

“I’ll show you. Come on, into the TARDIS.”

And so he pilots them until they’re in suspension above the planet, and he opens the doors and she leans into him and she wants to cry because it’s just _beautiful_.

But, while they admire the beauty of the planet, Rose can’t help but feel like a fraud. Some small part of her, a part that up until 1987 she thought was gone, is awakened. In the back of her mind, this incessant force trying desperately to break free, to take over. She thinks about the blade tucked away in her nightstand, she thinks about her scars and how close she was to giving in that night. How close she might be tonight. 

A lump forms in her throat. She swallows it down, uneasy, and tries to enjoy the moment with the Doctor, thinking about what she promised to herself.

______________

Her promise is broken, eventually. Just days after wandering the frozen waves of Woman Wept. She feels terrible afterwards, because it wasn’t as though there was a trigger. No, for some reason she just felt like doing it. She _had_ to.

And it hurt while she was sitting in her room, and it stung while she was standing in the shower, and guilt loomed over her head for nearly a whole day afterwards. 

She scolds herself for being an idiot, because she knows that once she gives in and cuts, the urge will only get worse. 

And it does.

_______________

The Doctor’s taken to waking her up in the middle of the night and showing her beautiful sights from the TARDIS doors. She doesn’t know why, but she doesn’t ask because she actually quite likes the fact that they have this little unspoken _thing_ they do. She reckons that he wants to have some time alone with her, now that they’ve got a third passenger aboard the ship. And when they walk past Jack’s room towards the console room, she feels like she’s 16 again, sneaking a boy past her mum’s room.

He comes in tonight, and though Rose hasn’t been able to fall asleep all night, she pretends to have just woken up. He takes her hand and they make their way into the console room until their sitting next to each other at the door, her bare feet dangling out of the ship next to his sock-clad ones.

It’s a beautiful nebula he’s chosen to show her tonight, and he’s quietly telling her all about the location as she cuddles up next to him, pulling her blanket tighter around herself.

She has to make a conscious effort to keep her eyes open, her body exhausted after another adventure with the Doctor and Jack, but her mind is awake. 

The Doctor chuckles at her softly. “Bed time?”

“No,” she mumbles, trying and failing to sound as assertive as possible in her tired state. “Let’s stay here a little longer.”

He gives her a bemused noise. “Alright, but I’m not carrying you to bed when you fall asleep on the floor.”

He tries to sound like he’s being serious but she knows he’s not. She would banter with him more if her mind weren’t straying elsewhere. She’s been thinking lately, about her nasty little habit. She wants to tell him, but just thinking about his reaction is nerve-wracking enough. Some stupid little ape, can’t even control her emotions so she has to cut her skin with a flimsy little blade from a razor.

But he puts his arm around her, then, and she tries to pretend like it’s enough to fix everything.

She knows it’s not.

______________

She traces the new scar on her thigh. And the other one, and the one next to that one. She remembers, from when she used to do this, that it can be a cycle. You start hesitantly, then you’re unable to stop yourself, then you swear to never do it again, and then it repeats. Never-ending, maybe. 

When her last relapse ended, when she got clean before she met the Doctor, she truly believed that it was her last time ever cutting. 

She looks back down at the new scars on her thighs and swallows down a bitter, empty laugh. The entire universe at the tips of her fingers and she’s stuck in her bedroom with a razor in her hand. _Again_.

______________

She’s tired of it, she decides. Utterly exhausted from the mental pushes and pulls that self-harm brings her. Days go by traveling with the Doctor and Jack, and she feels like she’s living two lives. She laughs herself to tears in the galley with Jack, chuckles at Dickens in the library with the Doctor, and yet as soon as she closes her door...

She increasingly begins to think, on the nights where she’s sitting on the edge of the TARDIS or lazing on the couch with the Doctor next to her, that maybe she could tell him. Maybe she should tell him. Maybe he would understand and maybe he would help. After 900 years of time and space, she supposes, the Doctor must have come across _somebody_ who has dealt with the same issues as her.

She’s with him tonight, alone in the library after a fun day with him and Jack. They went to a club in the 25th century, and her and the captain had a good laugh at seeing the Doctor getting hit on by no less than three young men and it was nice because Rose wasn’t thinking at all about the bloodied blade in her nightstand.

They finished David Copperfield tonight, and, too tired and comfortable to pick up another book from his Dickens collection, the Doctor and Rose decided to simply relax together on the big couch of the library. 

She looks to the man next to her, her eyes hardly open in her sleepy state, and decides that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to tell him. Maybe he would understand and maybe he would help her.

And in that night, Rose tells herself that she would open up to the Doctor when the time was right.

__________

Of course, the time is never right with the Doctor, and it’s only days later that Rose finds herself back on the Powell Estate, tears finding their way into her eyes after she listens to Emergency Program One.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be a second part to this, but I’m very busy and stressed with school so it could be in a week or it could be in a month. 
> 
> Feel free to leave criticism or just tell me that my writing sucks lol


End file.
